Fragmentation and Redemption

Arguing that historians must write in a comic mode, aware of history's artifice, risks and incompletion, Caroline Walker Bynum here examines diverse medieval texts to show how women were able to appropriate dominant social symbols in ways that allowed for the emergence of their own creative voices. By arguing for the positive importance attributed to the body, these essays aim to give a new interpretation of gender in medieval texts and the role of asceticism and mysticism in Christianity.